GE brings smart grids to life as appliances gain support

GE, which supplies up to a third of the appliances sold in the US, has signed …

On Wednesday, manufacturing giant GE announced a partnership with Tendril, a company that provides smart grid software and services. The agreement will see see GE work to incorporate monitoring and reporting capabilities into its consumer appliances and ensure that they communicate properly with Tendril's software. Tendril will focus on ensuring that the data the devices provide is communicated back to utilities. The two companies will also cooperate in developing load management algorithms that can help utilities remotely adjust the appliance's performance based on demand and available electric resources.

The promise of a smart grid depends on the degree of sophistication of the hardware and software involved. In its simpler form, a smart meter can provide consumers with a basic outline of their electricity use, which can help identify activities that draw the most power. More sophisticated versions involve having individual pieces of consumer hardware participate in a local network, allowing fine-grained analysis of power use.

At their most sophisticated, these kinds of appliances will enable two-way communications in order to provide demand response management. Utilities can provide a signal when electricity supplies are getting tight; consumers can set their appliances to respond accordingly, by temporarily shutting off the hot water heater or raising the thermostat slightly on hot days. The consumer will get lower electric rates for their participation, while the utility gets to avoid activating its oldest and least efficient plants.

To get all of that to work, however, you need the right hardware in place; a dumb refrigerator won't contribute much to the smart grid. Although there are a number of third-party products that can endow a mundane appliance with the networking and usage monitoring abilities required for smart grid applications, these don't provide the sort of sophisticated management capabilities that would be available if the monitoring and reporting portion of things actually knew what sort of hardware it was working with. The external attachments either force consumers to pay retail for the privilege of going smart, or they shift the burden to utilities.

So there's an obvious appeal to endowing appliances with smarts during manufacturing. Many appliances already have embedded controllers, so the additional costs should be low, especially at the economies of scale available to manufacturers. That's why getting GE on board is a big step; according to Tendril, the company makes up to one-third of the appliances sold in the US, and the announcement of the agreement specifically mentions demand response appliances.

It's also a major step for Tendril. So far, the company's most prominent successes have come through its consumer-level software, which provides customers with a dynamic analysis of their power use, either through a Web interface or via custom apps that run on smartphones. The new agreement would establish Tendril as a provider of the middleware that mediates communications between utilities and their end users. The joint development of management algorithms will also ensure that Tendril can provide an entire software stack for the smart grid.

Because many companies operating in the smart grid market have embraced open standards (including Tendril itself), it has been possible for traditional IT companies, including Cisco, Google, and Microsoft, to quickly enter the market. The partnership with GE clearly provides Tendril with the sort of credibility that may help it with utilities.

Regardless of what it means for Tendril, however, the key feature of this deal is that sophisticated energy management abilities should start reaching consumer-level appliances within the next several years. Hopefully, the grid will be ready to talk to them.

25 Reader Comments

sophisticated energy management abilities should start reaching consumer-level appliances within the next several years. Hopefully, the grid will be ready to talk to them.

And hopefully a corporation the size of GE getting in bed with the utilities won't take all power (no pun intended) away from the people who actually own the appliances. I don't mind the idea of getting a better rate on my electric bill in exchange for having one or more major appliances that can respond in some fashion to reduce their energy draw when the receive a signal from So Cal Edison that says supplies are getting tight. I'm even interested in the idea of "smart" appliances that report details of their energy use that would allow me to analyze and adjust usage as I see fit.

But under no circumstances do I want such detailed usage data passing beyond the walls of my home. I don't want Edison, or Google, or Microsoft, or anyone else having that information, because I don't approve of the privacy violation inherent in the those companies making money by selling that information in order to provide me with the "privilege" of yet more targeted advertising invading my life.

So here's to hoping GE keeps their customers in mind and not just their business partners. Here's to hoping these new smart appliances are owner-configurable to not report usage back to an external entity, or at the very least are configurable to have their smarts turned completely off so they can't report in any way to anyone. 'Cause it would be a shame to have to remove all GE equipment from consideration the next time I need to buy an appliance.

OK, i hate to be a downer on this; but who doesn't see the problems? You going to have the power company (and this assumes NOBODY, and I MEAN NOBODY can crack into the system) is going to somehow read your "smart" devices and turn the power down on them or turn them off (which, of course presumes that they know when and how it's actually safe and not inconvenient to do so)...

We turned your dryer off - sorry about teh moldy clothes. We turned your oven off - sorry about the uncooked turkey. We turned your water heater off - sorry about the cold shower. We turned your AC off - sorry you fried old folks. we turned your fridge down - sorry about the spoiled milk and stuff that thawed in the freezer. We turned the power down on the fridge or freezer compressor - sorry it burned it out. We turned off you electric car - sorry you can't drive to work today.

I just don't see the need for this sort of stuff. If you're not happy with how much power something uses, replace it with something more efficient or put it on a timer so it only runs when you need it. My parents had a timer on there hot water heater for like the last 20 years to save power. And as soon as cheap enough timer based thermostats came around, they had one of those too. I plan on having the same setup when i buy a house in the near future. There's not a single other appliance in my house I would want not running at my command (dryer, microwave, stove, etc) or 24/7 (refrigerator, home server, tivo, etc).

If they want to give me a little widget that I can put in my kitchen that shows me the current power cost and my current usage, fine. But there's no need to have appliances communicating with the grid.

I think the general idea is that in exchange for reducing load during peak demand, the consumer gets a discount for all usage. Most of the recent articles have been talking more about reducing services than turning things completely off (like what commercial users can do to get a discount). If you could save X% off your electric bills by agreeing to dry clothes slower, delay defrost cycles, and let your a/c run a few degrees warmer when the electric company signals that there is high demand; it might be worth it. If your appliances make it easy for this to happen, I don't think it's a bad thing.

This can be done with some sort of signal from the grid to the appliances*, and no communication from the devices to the grid (or anything else), but there might be some utility in gathering status information to present to the customer; and maybe some marginal utility in informing the grid of possible power consumption deltas available.

* An earlier article discussed using small variations in AC frequency as a signal: if the grid goes from 60.000Hz to 59.998Hz (or something) that could indicate to a smart device that it should temporarily reduce consumption.

The power company is not telling your devices to shut off. You are telling your devices to comply, or not comply, with some advisories from the power company. A setting for your thermostat that says "raise AC 4 deg/lower heat 4 deg when in a high cost time period" is a good thing, and if you do not like it then you do not enable the setting and you pay the increased cost for electricity use during those hours.

Originally posted by ronelson:The power company is not telling your devices to shut off. You are telling your devices to comply, or not comply, with some advisories from the power company. A setting for your thermostat that says "raise AC 4 deg/lower heat 4 deg when in a high cost time period" is a good thing, and if you do not like it then you do not enable the setting and you pay the increased cost for electricity use during those hours.

Step 1: get foot in door (make offer that sounds too good to be true).Step 2: Shove door open all the way (new law says you HAVE to participate).Step 3: Electric utility says "we're not selling enough electricity and it's costing us more so we're passing it on to you in a higher bill".

Just buy more efficient appliances and curb business lighting, street lighting (light pollution) and other waste.

Originally posted by ronelson:The power company is not telling your devices to shut off. You are telling your devices to comply, or not comply, with some advisories from the power company. A setting for your thermostat that says "raise AC 4 deg/lower heat 4 deg when in a high cost time period" is a good thing, and if you do not like it then you do not enable the setting and you pay the increased cost for electricity use during those hours.

Step 1: get foot in door (make offer that sounds too good to be true).Step 2: Shove door open all the way (new law says you HAVE to participate).Step 3: Electric utility says "we're not selling enough electricity and it's costing us more so we're passing it on to you in a higher bill".

Just buy more efficient appliances and curb business lighting, street lighting (light pollution) and other waste.

This. I'm not sure why people are so eager to believe that business and government (which are almost the same thing these days) will ever be content with the power they have.

Wow, the luddites all piled in early. Earl grey is right that smart appliances will eventually become mandatory; it's only a matter of time. And really, it's not nearly as bad an idea as some of you make it out to be. If you've read the article--and previous articles on the matter--you'll know that turning your refrigerator off isn't in the cards here. Nor is forcing any appliance to do anything that might damage it. If having your air conditioning dialed back four degrees is the cost of keeping the grid stable during peak demand... you're just going to have to deal with it. If you don't like that, blame your even bigger luddite neighbors, who've been obstructing the expansion of safe and clean nuclear power for the last few decades. People have made their bed vis a vis the power-supply infrastructure, and it's coming time for them to lay in it.

I suppose I'm ok with this provided that it is regulated. On really hot days in NOVA, we have the lovely rolling brownouts when load reaches its max. If a signal can be sent out to say "hey, please conserve now!" I'm fine with that.

However, I'd want some restrictions on how this can be used. So its not "please don't use power when we have a low rate but feel free to use it when we'll be making the big bucks".

I also don't see a reason for this to report back to the power company in any way other than power usage drops. Send the signal, appliances go into conservation mode, but they don't need to phone home that they have done so.

The local utility company here is offering the "privilege" of paying more a month to get a smart thermostat for your air conditioner. In the documentation they sent out it states they reserve the right to turn off your air conditioner up to 15 minutes at a time, but no more than twice an hour. So they can turn off your AC for 30 minutes an hour.

In Texas? In July/August? Forget it buddy... might as well trying to take a fish out of the water for 30 minutes every hour.

Originally posted by Black_Obsidian:Wow, the luddites all piled in early. Earl grey is right that smart appliances will eventually become mandatory; it's only a matter of time. And really, it's not nearly as bad an idea as some of you make it out to be. If you've read the article--and previous articles on the matter--you'll know that turning your refrigerator off isn't in the cards here. Nor is forcing any appliance to do anything that might damage it. If having your air conditioning dialed back four degrees is the cost of keeping the grid stable during peak demand... you're just going to have to deal with it. If you don't like that, blame your even bigger luddite neighbors, who've been obstructing the expansion of safe and clean nuclear power for the last few decades. People have made their bed vis a vis the power-supply infrastructure, and it's coming time for them to lay in it.

If being opposed to enormous corporations being in bed with enormous government and making a love child in the form of reduced personal freedoms makes me a Luddite then I guess I'm guilty as charged.

Forgive me for not being so naive as to believe that this will not eventually become a perfect mirror of the non-neutral networks we have now.

I think one of the better ways i've seen matters put was by someone who was referring to the choice faced by office buildings in NYC: would you rather have us dial down your elevators to 80% of full speed, or have your entire building brown out?

The real promise here is giving user fine-grained control: yes on the hot water heater, no on the AC; start the dishwasher only after the rates drop below $x/KWhr; etc. That said, i suspect there will be a learning period for everyone involved, and some of the nightmare scenarios people are mentioning will take place within individual utilities.

There's more than two options to the future of the power grid, Dr. Jay. The smart grid itself is far more than just home appliances. A third option, one that GE and its competitors already working on, is better relays to control the infrastructure. Right now, 90% of the relays controlling the power grid are dumb electromechanical relays that the industry has been using since the dawn of the electric age. They have sold modern, microprocessor based relays for the last twenty five years that can improve the efficiency and stability of the grid without the need to do any of this expensive at-the-consumer-end appliance replacement. Many utilities already own these. Some of those utilities don't even know that they can turn on those features.

Originally posted by thaJungle-Doa:The local utility company here is offering the "privilege" of paying more a month to get a smart thermostat for your air conditioner. In the documentation they sent out it states they reserve the right to turn off your air conditioner up to 15 minutes at a time, but no more than twice an hour. So they can turn off your AC for 30 minutes an hour.

In Texas? In July/August? Forget it buddy... might as well trying to take a fish out of the water for 30 minutes every hour.

At a certain point it's better to not even bother with the AC. Both people and machines do better at a constant temperature they can adapt to rather than drastic changes in air temperature. I have experience this myself firsthand personally aswell with large fancy overpriced servers that you usually want to keep well cooled.

Apparently according to Sun it's more important that you avoid those 20+ degreetemperature shifts when the AC fails. Running them at 100F+ is actually less of aproblem.

The best solution is generally the one that is most locally controlled.

You guys are getting alarmist and blowing this out or proportion. Obviously there would be huge customer backlash if the power company switched off appliances that were currently in need/use (EG: your clothes dryer, your fridge, your AC, etc).

The idea behind this would be appliances providing metrics to a hub you could monitor, which could let you or the power company analyze usage and "power down" things during no-use periods. EG: the AC adapters in the walls that are no longer needing to charge or power something could get a signal to switch off and stop drawing phantom power.

These appliances would probably work in tiers, and be user-settable. Piddly stuff like decorative lights on a house could easily get powered down during high usage spikes, while critical-need appliances that should never get a signal to power down, like at-home life support equipment, would always remain on. As power usage spiked, non-critical devices could get silently powered down based on tier, or switched into a low-usage mode. This would be a setting the customer would obviously control. Your appliance may be hooked to the smart grid, but ultimately it would be up to you to set the appliance on how aggressive or passive it wants to play with the smart grid. Thus, you would still be in control.

The idea of having to micromanage all of your appliances' power usage settings seems annoying, though. Again, I'm thinking we'll eventually hit a point where each appliance would just talk with a wifi network, and you'd bring up a program on your comp to manage each device (or groups of devices) as you saw fit.

EDIT: That smart AC in Texas has got to be the dumbest thing. Ideally, a smart AC thermostat would just dial up the temp a few degrees when power loads were getting critical. EG: you'd like it to run 76 all the time, but the power company can flux it up to 78 for half an hour each hour. Likewise, there's no point in installing a smart thermostat into a home that has shitty ductwork and circulation. A lot of homes just need $100 worth of insulation and energy efficiency care-taking, and it'd shave off that much and more each month. In some cases, tackling this from the energy company's side is like putting the cart before the horse.

Originally posted by Tundro Walker:These appliances would probably work in tiers, and be user-settable. Piddly stuff like decorative lights on a house could easily get powered down during high usage spikes, while critical-need appliances that should never get a signal to power down, like at-home life support equipment, would always remain on. As power usage spiked, non-critical devices could get silently powered down based on tier, or switched into a low-usage mode. This would be a setting the customer would obviously control. Your appliance may be hooked to the smart grid, but ultimately it would be up to you to set the appliance on how aggressive or passive it wants to play with the smart grid. Thus, you would still be in control.

I am still, based on the great history of governmental and corporate power grabs, completely unconvinced that this utopia would ever exist. Or that it might exist at some point until it's realized that those upscale yuppies across the tracks have set everything in their home to the "Critical Appliance: Never Turn Off" tier so as not to upset the delicate mood lighting accentuating their carefully sculpted landscaping.

In fact, I would predict that if this type of system were ever implemented (and signs point to it), that sort of class envy would be the platform of almost every politician within six months.

Originally posted by ronelson:The power company is not telling your devices to shut off. You are telling your devices to comply, or not comply, with some advisories from the power company.

I don't think there are enough details here to say whether the utility company will be telling devices to shut off or not. Part of the promise of having smarts built in to the appliances is the ability to have them react by reducing power use in a reasonable way, rather than simply shutting off, but that doesn't mean shutting off cannot possibly be in the cards. I participate in a program RIGHT NOW where I have an RF receiver attached to my air conditioner and So Cal Edison can send out a signal that will turn it off for a time during peak load conditions. I get a credit on my bill for participating, and since I'm almost never actually home at peak load times (ie weekday afternoons when I'm at work), I'm more or less unaffected by it.

The point I made in my earlier comment is related to what I just said about smart appliances having the promise to allow more intelligent response. If my AC could simply up the target temperature by four or five degrees instead of shutting off, or my fridge could delay a defrost cycle by a few hours, I'm fine with that. But I want control of it. I want to be able to configure how my appliances will respond to a signal from the utility, or even whether they will respond at all. I want to make sure that one day out of several years when I'm scrambling to get some laundry done in order to get to the airport on time, I don't get delayed by the power company telling my dryer to run cooler, thus making it take half again as long to dry my clothes.

As for the "Luddite" comments, it's time for some people to pull their heads out of the sand. Yes, earl grey's concerns about appliances being shut off left and right are probably a bit of an overreaction. But jdietz' example of "User #000001 in district #001 has a fridge and air conditioner, and they are both on right now" is also naive. Just from previous coverage here on Ars we already know that both Google and Microsoft want in on collecting usage data back from smart appliances, ostensibly so they can offer cool services to people showing them what appliances are using the most electricity, offering advice on how to reduce usage (and thus bills), etc. But remember, these are companies that have fought tooth and nail against anonymizing the logs from their search engines. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to find all the previous coverage of how important both of these companies think targeted advertising is going to be, and how they're maneuvering to secure as much of that business for themselves as possible. For those who don't believe and are flat out too lazy to search for themselves, I'll just leave you with this little YouTube clip of Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, telling the world that the bedrock of MS is now advertisers:

"What was that article you published critical of the administration or your local officials? Oh we've determined you are using too much electricity and you've run out of your government supplied carbon credits so we're turning off your refrigerator. What's that you say? Your food will spoil and you can't get additional 'stimulus plan' rations? Well it wouldn't be right to take away someone else's rations and give them to you now would it? After all we have no more money to give after we gave it all to the our council heads the big too big to fail banks.

After all you wouldn't want to be like the 'global warming deniers' who are a threat to the health of mother earth, blessed be mother earth. Looking forward to your next article where you think and teach people to think the 'right way' for our 'common purpose' Sincerely, your chief priest of mother earth Tony Blair."

Originally posted by fxds:Part of the promise of having smarts built in to the appliances is the ability to have them react by reducing power use in a reasonable way, rather than simply shutting off, but that doesn't mean shutting off cannot possibly be in the cards. I participate in a program RIGHT NOW where I have an RF receiver attached to my air conditioner and So Cal Edison can send out a signal that will turn it off for a time during peak load conditions. I get a credit on my bill for participating, and since I'm almost never actually home at peak load times (ie weekday afternoons when I'm at work), I'm more or less unaffected by it.

Erm, why would you even have the AC on when you're not there? It shouldn't take that long to cool things down with a fan and then some AC when you get home.